A week to both relax and dance,
sharing circle dance together in a beautiful, peaceful
environment, but
with plenty of time to enjoy the nearby beaches, and wooded
mountain
walks.
Some dance experience
is needed
- Circle Dance or World Dance; or International Folk Dance if
you are
happy to
fit in with
the different approach taken in Circle Dance. I teach both IFD
and
Circle Dance,
but please note this is not an IFD holiday.
This event ran for the
first time in Sept. 2007 - my brief
written review is at the end
of this page.
Venue
This holiday will again be
held at the Pilion Centre in Anilio, but under the auspices of Kalikalos,
who have taken over the lease there. Some people from Kalikalos
were
associated with the Pilion Centre
a few years back. They will run my holiday down at Anilio,
rather than
at
Kalikalos itself, so that we can use
the dance space there. The dance space is in a lovely setting,
looking
out on to woodland. Pilion Centre is where I
ran the event in 2007.....
Beach
nearby, walks, woods.....The centre is run on a non-profit
basis, and has an ethos which values building community - as
part of
this,
dancers are expected to contribute 4 to 5 hours help during the
week
with
activities such as washing up, food preparation, cleaning,
watering the
garden and so on. This also
keeps the cost down. Expect to be on afternoon cooking rota for
the
evening meal
at least once during the week - probably no more than once if
the venue
is
fairly full. We are all expected to participate in a cleanup on
the
final
morning - please bear this in mind regarding your flight times!
See the
Centre's
facilities
page for more on
all this.
Accommodation
Kalikalos's main building is a
small hotel or large guest house (Xenonas, in Greek) located at
the
edge of the village of Kissos in the Pilion Mountains of Greece.
However, we will be staying
and dancing down in Anilio, at the Pilion Centre.
The basic price is for a shared
room at the Pilion Centre.
-
17 beds in six bedrooms, all
with shared toilets and showers
-
Possibility of extra rooms
(tbc) in a guest house about 10 min. walk from the Centre in
Anilio
village. Possibility of single occupancy.
-
Possibility of tent
accommodation, though September may get some rainy weather -
discuss
with the Centre!
Meals All
meals are provided and included in the
price. We are all expected to provide some help, including with
the
cooking of
at least one evening meal - see Venue
above. As the cooking is generally done by the community -
staff,
participants, and guests - they usually stick to basic tasty,
vegetarian meals
using mainly local produce. You can see some typical
menus on the Kalikalos website.
A buffet breakfast and a main meal
(usually dinner)
is provided. Lunch is a snack meal, generally a beach picnic box
consisting of
bread, butter/marge, olives, cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers and
fruit.
Once a week
the staff have a day off from coordinating a main meal, so most
people
eat out
that evening at one of the local tavernas, where a basic meal
with a
glass of
wine runs to about £9.00 (€11.00). NB The taverna meal is
not included in the basic price of the holiday.
Prices &
booking details Charge for the week, including
everything except your travel (i.e. flights and associated
transfers to
and from Pilion) and a taverna meal out, is £325/€450 Euros for
shared
accommodation.
The basic price provides accommodation in a
double/twin or triple or quad
room. There is a double/twin room guarantee supplement of
£50/€75.
There is a low-season
single room supplement of £100/€150. These are payable in
advance along
with your deposit of £100/€150. There may be a reduction of
£20/€30
for tent occupancy providing that you bring your own tent,
sleeping
bag, foam
mattress, towel and (if desired) pillow - tent space is not
guaranteed,
so check
with Kalikalos.
You can either pay your deposit plus any room
supplements, or pay the full
amountin advance. Bookings can be made in several ways - please
enquire
for more
details.
1. via the Centre's
booking
page on their website, using a credit card or Paypal. NB
although
UK/European dancers will be charged in GBP or Euros, the
operating
price of the
payment processor is US dollars. You will therefore be charged
the
current GBP
or Euros equivalent of the $175 dollar deposit, and any
discrepancy
will be made
up when you arrive at the Centre. As an example, on 14 January
2009 the
deposit
worked out at £126.89. Even if you intend to pay by another
method, the
website
shows you the various things to include in the price - room
supplements,
discounts for overland travel, etc.
2. by sterling cheque to me - Paul Boizot, 39 Hamilton Drive
East, York
YO24 4DW, UK.
3. by cheque (payable to the Holly Foundation) to Johanna Aro
Louis, 19
Blarmore
Avenue, Inverness IV3 8QT, Scotland.
4. by direct transfer to a Kalikalos bank account.
For prices for children and for guests not attending
workshops please see the
Kalikalos Families
and Guests page.
Reduced rates apply
for Greeks, and residents of other countries where the standard
of
living is considerably lower than in the developed countries of
N. Europe and N. America. There is a 10% discount given for
booking
two consecutive workshop weeks and there is a 5% discount for
traveling
overland
and reducing our carbon footprint. A limited number of partial bursaries
and work-exchanges are available for those whose financial
resources
are
limited.
You can also spend an extra week
at the Centre without
participating in a workshop, subject to space being available.
The rate
for
full board in 2008 was £175/€250 per week (£25/€40 per day).
Getting there Anilio
is roughly 27 miles (40km) east of Volos, Greece's 6th largest
city.
Volos
itself is 4 hours by bus from Athens, 2.5 hours from
Thessaloniki and
80 minutes
by “Flying Dolphin” hydrofoil from the island of
Skiathos.
There are many different ways to
travel to the Centre. There are regular flights to the nearby
island of
Skiathos from many UK airports, flights to Thessaloniki and
Athens,
some last-minute direct flights to Volos, and the friendly local
taxi
service - or possibly minibus share - to bring you from Volos.
For
people with time to spare, there are improved road and rail
connections. See the Kalikalos
travel
page for full details, map, etc.
Do note though that you will be
unlikely to just get a standard budget airline flight from the
UK for
£50 each way! Some budget airlines do go to Athens now, but only
from
the south of England, and it is a longer trip than Spain or
France.
Look at the Kalikalos
travel
page for a full range of options - they say, for
example, that flights to Skiathos/Volos depart from London
Gatwick,
Manchester and Newcastle. The published fares range from £169 to
£289
for one or two week charters....Typical return fares to
Athens/Thessaloniki on Easy Jet from London run as low as £140
if
booked well in advance.
I flew to Thessaloniki in 2007
for around £200 return, having waited to book the flight till a
few
weeks before the event, then got the KTEL bus to Volos. The
majority of
our party booked earlier and flew in to nearby Skiathos, paying
around
£280 return. I think the Centre's charges are low enough to make
this
still a reasonably priced event.
Dates & Times
Friday 4 - Friday 11 September 2009. Fridays are arrival and
departure days. Dance sessions run from the Saturday to the
Thursday.
We will be expected to spend some time clearing up on the final
Friday
morning, so please take this into account regarding your travel
times.
Programme
I want to strike a balance
between time spent dancing and time spent relaxing and enjoying
the
centre, its
surroundings, and each other's company.
The basic plan is to dance in the
mornings when it is cooler -
though the Centre is quite temperate for Greece, and September
is past
the
hottest weather. Afternoons will mainly be mostly for relaxing,
walking,
visiting the beach. Then we will usually dance again in the
early
evening before supper.
(NB each dancer will be on cooking rota for one evening meal,
which for
most
dancers will mean missing one evening session).
There can be other options, apart
from dancing, if any participants want them -
in 2007 we had a singing session where each of us brought a song
along,
and I
will certainly come equipped with lyrics for some simpler
Circle/Folk dance songs.
About
me I live in York, UK, and have taught
dance since 1992. I have been told I am very clear in my
teaching, and
I like to teach with some humour. My choreographies
include Ever-Flowing Spring, Wise Maid, Twilight, Hoireann O,
Klezmer
Waltz, Truvisqueira, Turning Point and Butterfly Jig. I
particularly
like Balkan (including Rom/Gypsy), Romanian and Greek
traditional
dances as well as some modern and meditational ones. I am
interested in
how the whole body
is used in dance - using dance to improve posture, and
vice-versa. I also sing, drum and play bouzouki. For more info,
see DANCE & MUSIC.
Further details
Paul Boizot, 39 Hamilton Drive
East, York YO24 4DW
01904 621510 info@paulboizot.co.uk
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as one A4 page.
Review
of 2007 event at the Pilion
Centre (NB 2009 event is at a different venue a few miles
away, but with the
same basic ethos).
This event ran for the first time
in Sept. 2007
and was generally well received by those who came and danced. It
was
great to dance in the longhouse with the blinds raised up on two
sides
so that we were
looking straight out onto woodland. Occasionally we would see
the
silhouette of
a lizard on the canvas roof. The Pilion Centre is in a really
beautiful
setting,
and the whole area around it is much more green and fertile than
many
other
parts of Greece.
Food was great - all veggie and
freshly prepared. The accommodation was basic but generally OK -
note
that the
Pilion Centre bills itself as "the affordable alternative". Some
of
the rooms might have been a bit crowded if full to capacity, but
we
were a
smallish group.
One of our party volunteered to
drive a minibus, so we all
chipped in and hired one for trips to beaches, tavernas, etc.,
though
some
people still walked to the beach sometimes - around 40 minutes
downhill, a
little longer coming back....
I had been concerned about how
much time we would have to dance
- would we fit enough in? In fact the balance seemed to work
well -
dancing from
around 10 a.m. till lunchtime, then a short time preparing veg,
eating,
clearing
up, and then the afternoon free for walks, beach, or just lazing
around
on-site
with a book. Dancing again from around 5.30 till 8.00 p.m., then
on
most
evenings supper and chatting - or singing, or a bit of
music-making -
till
bedtime. We went out for taverna meals on a couple of nights,
and had
one
late-night dance session. The weather was cool enough in the
evenings
that some
of us needed an extra layer or two by the end of the dancing - I
was
glad to
have it that way as I had been concerned that it might be too
hot. The
days were
generally warm enough though!
I am looking forward to enjoying
the event even more in 2009 as
I had a tooth abscess last time, which developed within a day of
landing in
Greece! My first experience of the Greek health service was all
positive, though
- James at the Pilion Centre contacted the Health Centre at
Zagora,
Jane drove
me there in the minibus, and an English-speaking doctor
prescribed me
antibiotics.
Here's to an even better event at
Kalikalos in 2009!
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Page last updated 18.08.17
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